


Grief Work

by hylian_reptile



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Bad Head Times feat. Felix, Bad Touches feat. Felix, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Dramatic Brooding feat. Locus, M/M, Minor Character Death, Neon Genesis Evangelion feat. Washington, One-Sided Relationship, Past Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-02
Updated: 2017-11-02
Packaged: 2019-01-28 11:33:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12605680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hylian_reptile/pseuds/hylian_reptile
Summary: Grif asks Locus if he ever misses Felix. (Check content warnings.)





	Grief Work

**Author's Note:**

> arum-lil was named by aryashi; as always thank u for everything u do dear

Locus and Grif will spend a night aboard the ship, scrounging up meager food supplies for Locus to cook a meal for the two of them. Grif won’t seem to mind that most of Locus’s foodstuffs are ration bars, but Locus will find himself... self-conscious. A food ration bar is no way to treat a guest, in Locus’s opinion. A food ration bar is no food at all. Just a tool to consume to preserve a living body.

 

They’ll be MacGyvering an old hot-plate back together to heat up some bouillon broth and a can of corned beef. Locus will be hoping the batteries he found in the glove compartment have actual charge and ignoring ninety-five percent of what Grif is chattering about when Grif will ask again: “Do you, though?”

 

“Do I what,” Locus will say.

 

“Ever miss Felix?”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He is overwhelmed by the magnitude of words. How fucking _useless_ they are. Where would he even begin? How does he start? This monumental, vast, impossible, _singular_ mission—the only one he will ever have again?

 

* * *

 

 

The colony is beautiful.

 

The soil is a glittering white on this moon, like dry snow, and soundless under Locus’s feet. Abandoned factories, outsourced industry locations, litter the moon horizon like large, ancient toys. There are sickly-dark green fields sprouting out behind the colony base—tenuous and twisted and shrunken, but still striving to thrive, as plants do. Further out are huge, monolithic tanks for water purification. The air is hazy like a permanent gauze across his eyes. The atmosphere has an unmovable chill. Read-outs on the HUD tell Locus that the atmosphere contained residual pollution from over a hundred and fifty years ago; the pollution will not kill him within the day, but without power-generated air filtering, he wouldn’t survive the week.

 

The base itself is one long collection of squat metal sectors connected with sealed walkways of glass that shimmer in the hints of sunlight. There are three bodies slumped across the white soil outside. There are four more visible in the glass walkways. Corpses cradled in the non-snow, growing rot in the cold sun.

 

There is no wind. There is no sound.

 

Just Locus.

 

At length, he invites himself inside.

 

The base door, obviously meant to be electronically sealed against the toxic air, has no power, and he forces it open with the enhanced strength of his armor. There are two corpses lying side by side in the entryway, slumped against a potted plant. They are holding hands.

 

The air-filter read-out on the wall is depowered and blank, save one tiny red light. Refugee Colony Arum-Lil, Locus hypothesizes on the spot, suffered some accident to its power generator. (Where was the back-up generator?) No power means no communication, no help signal, no water purification, no growable food, no air purification, no atmosphere sealant. If the air didn’t get them, the lack of potable water would. Up to a week of waiting for death.

 

Locus steps over the legs of the two corpses. His foot brushes theirs. The bodies begin to slump. Locus does not look back. He slides through the glass hallways and metal floors and vanishes into his active camo.

 

There are no people there to see him, but he—he doesn’t know how to put it into words. The corpses could be taken for sleeping bodies, even though every vitals check turns out negative, but he makes no mistake: he knows they’re corpses. They have the pallor. They have the… smell.

 

This place is for only ghosts and the invisible dead, now. He is trying to be respectful, maybe, by using the camo. He is trying to follow the crowd. He is flashing the colors that signal: _I, too, am one of you_.

 

* * *

 

 

The rooms in the base are huge and sprawling and have no individual rooms. People’s possessions are rag-tag and worn-down and scattered everywhere. Bags and bags of clothes piled high. Entire families worth of possessions scattering into other families and other lives. (Entire families lying in rows, like harvestable crop. Like how his squad used to do to their victims, during the war, after a massacre.) Giant atriums transformed into communal bomb shelters. Hallways with children’s painted art scrawled directly on the metal, but no children in sight. A well-tended, but still ugly, garden is visible through the windowed walkways.

 

Locus did not believe the woman at the refueling station when she gave him the coordinates. “ _They’ll take anyone,_ ” she’d said. “ _I was there, I lived there for years. I mean it when I say they’ll take anyone. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you came from or what you’ve done. Their policy is entirely open-door, no questions asked._ ”

 

She’d offered him the coordinates written on the back of her receipt. Locus, broke and homeless and ally-less and living on his stolen ship in outdated armor, said, “ _I don’t need this._ ”

 

And he didn’t.

 

Doesn’t.

 

He goes from day to day as if every day is a sniper shot: no other shot—and no other day—but the one he’s in exists. Like a good marksman stringing together a long list of kills, he strings together days where everybody lives: one at a time, methodically, with the knowledge that every shot could be the one that fails him and that every job could be the one that kills him.

 

Nowadays, the one criterion of a successful missio—a successful _day_ , means neither he nor anyone else is dead on his watch. Ki— _sniping_ has been the only thing he’s good at for a long time, because it’s the only part of his judgment that he could trust. He might not know who or why he was killing, but when it came to if he could make that person dead, that was a shot he could _know_ he could call.

 

As if he could invoke the same unfailing precision he holds in his hands over a shot, he starts every day with the routine: breathe in, breathe out, hold, and fire. Methodical. Machine-like. He takes no shot but the one in front of him, looks nowhere but at the target, lets time and space and consequence cease to speak, lets himself cease to be.

 

Locus knows he can make the shot. That was the point of him, for ages, so making the shot was never the problem. The problem is deciding _where to shoot_. Deciding _who_ and _what_. Deciding _why_.

 

(He wants to say such decisions are no longer a problem, but Locus has never enjoyed lying.)

 

“ _I’ll send them a message anyway,_ ” the woman had said. “ _So they’ll know to expect you. Don’t bother with forging identity papers. Arum-Lil specializes in refugees like you. It’s here for you if you want._ ”

 

* * *

 

 

(So easy to say: Locus can go wherever he wants. So easy to say that, now that he’s alone, Locus is always sure of his reasonings. So easy to say that Locus is always sure of his decision to leave Felix to die. So easy to say that Locus is relieved that Felix is gone. So, so easy to say that Locus never wants Felix to come back and tell him what to do, never wants Felix to crawl under his skin and drag him by his many hooks and wires until Locus doesn’t know what he wants and doesn’t know what he knows.

 

So easy to say. All he has to do is open his mouth and say it: _Felix is gone. Felix is dead. Felix is never coming back. Felix will never bother Locus again_.

 

But Locus doesn’t have anyone around to say anything to, nowadays. And Felix does not come back, no matter what Locus does or doesn’t want. So Locus doesn’t say anything.)

 

* * *

 

 

The generator power room is empty. That would explain the lack of… well. Generated power.

 

After a few minutes of debate, he gets the security computer working again with a handheld battery. He doesn’t want to see any one of these corpses alive and walking around, but he wants to see where the generator went more. He speeds through the time lapse. Refuses to linger. Doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes, like a stranger on a city street.

 

When he finds the cause of the missing generator, he, of course, thinks that he’s seeing the Reds and Blues waltzing away with two whole power generators, leaving an entire colony of people to die. Which is impossible—

 

 _Entirely_ possible. He’s seen better men do worse. Any crime is possible, provided a human’s hands.

 

—Washington wouldn’t let them. Washington wouldn’t have put his faith so wrongly—not someone who’d come from such a background—

 

Focus. (Don’t be stupid. What’s wrong with you? _Man, are you obsessed with these guys or what?_ ) Look at the facts. Stay on track. Keep moving forward. Breathe in, breathe out, hold.

 

Locus crawls through the footage. Here are the facts: The people in the colored armor walk into the colony and are greeted with open arms and an open door. They’re given a place to stay and a room to store their belongings. During the night, the men stand up, put their armor back on, and take not one but _both_ the main generator and the back-up generator. One of them literally rips the back-up out of the wall, wires and all. Then they walk out, pack up, and take off on their ship before any of the colonists have even woken up.

 

No Washington, no Carolina—no simtrooper in orange. They could be off doing some other operation; these men walk with purpose and take nothing but the power generator, so they’ve got some end goal in mind that could require a separate team—

 

What’s the point in looking at this footage? Locus nearly pulls the battery out on the spot. Oh, hell. He knows it’s not the Reds and Blues—

 

—No, he _doesn’t_. He has to look at the facts, use logic, verify truth and derive a thesis from reality, rather than impose a hypothesis on his findings. Locus could never know the Reds and Blues well enough to rule out the turns a human soul—no, a human _mind_ could take. Gut feeling is for people of flesh and blood. Thinking for oneself will always be the first mistake. Emotions cloud your functioni—

 

_I thought that was allowed, now?_

 

Locus yanks the battery and the computer goes dark.

 

* * *

 

 

Locus makes the mistake of looking for more evidence—anything the Blue and Red imposters might have left behind. He opens a door and finds a room with white walls painted full of blood and brain matter.

 

Bodies littered across the floor, a hole clean through each of their heads, starting from the soft underbelly of the jaw up through the back of the brain. There’s one air-pressure gun still in one of their hands. Refugees are too poor for bullets.

 

The sign on the inside of the door reads: _Pull the door shut before you pull the trigger._

 

A room for the people who didn’t want to wait the week, then. A community-agreed-upon solution. How organized. How… considerate.

 

Locus closes the door behind him. Pulls the door shut, shuts it _firmly_ , and turns the lock on the doorknob.

 

Then he rips the doorknob off and throws it down the hallwa—

 

* * *

 

 

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.

 

* * *

 

 

There’s no point in staying here.  Pursuing revenge does not bring people back from the dead. There is no bounty after the Blue and Red thieves, so unless Locus takes these people to court himself—which he can’t do, being a criminal himself—nobody will testify against them. He could fly them to the nearest law enforcement with evidence gathered from the scene of the crime, but then he’s tampering with the purity of the crime scene and giving the prosecution clear grounds to claim forged evidence. None of these decisions are viable, and the one Locus _can_ pursue is…

 

Criticizable.

 

Not that there’s anyone around to criticize him, of course.

 

He gets all the way back to his ship before he remembers: his ship can’t fly. He used up the last of the fuel getting here. He hadn’t expected the entire colony to be _fucking_ —

 

(Breathe—!)

 

—compromised.

 

Locus drags one hand down the face of his helmet. He’d forgotten that the last time he’d filled the ship with any sort of fuel was over a month ago. (Amateur mistakes, Locs, what’s wrong with you _now_?) By god, he’s not sorry he nuked the up-front payment from Hargrove, but he does miss having money.

 

He depressurizes the ship, crawls inside the innards, and pulls out the solar-panel plates. Hooks them up. Props them up in the white dirt. The ship takes almost a full twelve Earth hours to charge completely. Locus is estimating closer to twenty-four with the weak lighting on this moon. And he hasn’t seen the sun set yet, so he has no idea what the revolution of this moon is or when the sunlight might disappear.

 

Nevertheless, he resolves that when the ship is charged, he’ll leave. No need to waste time here.

 

He passes hours recharging his armor and the handheld batteries. Watches the glass and metal of the colony base glint in the sun. Watches the hulking, black wrecks of old factories on the horizon. Watches the shriveled fields shrink and die. No wind. No sound. Just Locus.

 

Breathe in. Breathe out. Holds.

 

* * *

 

 

Locus holds for a long time.

 

* * *

 

 

A long, long, long time.

 

* * *

 

 

He’s held longer, waiting for the perfect shot. He once held position for almost forty-eight hours, because those were his orders. He made the shots, too. Bang, right through the chest, through the lungs every time because he was good enough to pick and choose the organs he aimed for. Of course he was. He was a suit of armor and a gun. Making the shot was the point of him. Bodies dropping in sprays. Bodies running. Not getting very far. Sometimes Locus had let them run, because he knew where the other members of his squad are waiting. They had machetes. Eventually, a house went up in flames.

 

When his squad gave him the all clear, Locus packed away his sniper rifle in his box and headed down the hill. His squad was dragging bodies out of the houses. Felix flashed a knife with an acknowledging tilt of his head, ready to cut the clothes right off the skin. They were going to strip them for possessions, then strip the houses for supplies, then burn everything. Entire families lying in rows, like harvestable crop.

 

* * *

 

 

(The Blue and Red imposters had looked people in the eye and decided that they were worth killing—that they had a reason good enough to determine that other people no longer had the right to live. They were not senseless murderers. They were people with an agenda. They killed with reason. They killed as a means to a higher end.

 

They’d decided, if not through thought then through action, that a human life is lesser than their purposes. That _everything_ is lesser than their purposes.

 

He wants to be able to make that decision. He, wildly, thinks he’d want to value life less. He wants to value _everything_ less, because then everything would be simpler. He’s—he’s...

 

... _envious._ )

 

* * *

 

 

Cradled in his armor, locked in his helmet with the speakers off. Even his breathing is silent. His active camo beats like a heart. He vanishes into the white dirt. An invisible ghost among thousands of dead. There are no choices now but to wait.

 

* * *

 

 

And he feels like this is where he belongs. That this is what he came to Arum-Lil for: _I, too, am one of you_.

 

* * *

 

 

He falls asleep.

 

And he dreams of Felix.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most ex-soldiers dream of death. Locus does, too. Always did and still does—but nowadays, death looks a lot like a stringy white man named Isaac “Felix” Gates.

 

Oh, Locus knows: comparing Felix to death gives him too much power in the physical sense. Felix was a scrawny, spiteful weasel, with sharp teeth and not enough bite, a quick mind but not fast enough feet. Felix was no force of nature or a one-man army. Locus was never impressed with Felix’s _physical_ talent for making things dead.

 

Felix’s one and only gift was knowing exactly what he was put on this earth to do, and that was to serve himself. He served himself because he wanted to because he wanted to destroy everyone else because he served himself. He might have been complicated, he might have gone through many steps to serve himself and served himself in many obscure ways, but the loop was ultimately circular. Self-contained, self-absorbed, self-centered, with no purpose other than to feed himself and his insecurities, to no point but to be. Causeless, deliberate, awful. Locus knows of no one—knows of no _thing_ else so like death himself.

 

Locus does not think that Felix knew what he was. Felix would have only gotten a kick out of it. Felix, Locus thinks, could never have _imagined_ that Locus would one day dream of Felix at night. Felix would have jizzed his goddamn pants knowing that Felix had gotten him so good.

 

Today, Locus is dreaming of dreaming: He dreamed, the night after Control told them to go to war with Chorus, that he woke up from a nightmare over and over. Every time, Washington says, “ _You keep trying to play yourself off as some sort of weapon—that you don't care about anyone or anything—but the fact that you're trying so hard to understand me breaks your entire act! No matter how hard you may want to be, you're not a machine, you're a murderer—_ ”

 

And then Locus sits on Agent Washington’s chest, with Washington’s neck lying on the edge of the ice like on the chopping block of a guillotine, and wraps his fingers around Washington’s neck. Every time, he watches all the words in Washington’s mouth die. Every time, Washington fades under his hands, the air pipe crushed under Locus’s metal grip. Every time, no matter how many times Washington dies, Locus only wakes up to find himself killing Washington again. Locus remembers that it was freezing, and snowing, but he couldn’t go numb.

 

Every time, the moment before Washington dies and Locus wakes up to another dream, Locus looks at the half-glazed, glassy eyes of Washington’s almost-corpse, and knows, with a conviction he can’t place, that this person is not Agent Washington.

 

Locus knows, then, that he himself is going to disappear. Not-Agent Washington is going to kill Locus for good with his own endless murder. He is going to vanish from reality into this dream in which he kills, over and over, this man who is not Agent Washington—rows and rows of Washingtons, like harvestable crop, laying in the not-snow. Locus is going to sink into the many layers of this special hell for old machines; just like him, broken armor and rotten guns disappear into the only action they know how to do. Locus is supposed to think that this is good, he hypothesizes, considering how strongly he strove to become metal plates and wires in life. (But he only finds it to be the most revolting kind of soothing.)

 

With every death, Washington looks more familiar—maybe like how murder is familiar, but maybe like looking into a mirror. And Locus, who is going to disappear into the many iterations of the murder of Agent Washington, has no one left to impress, no track record left of kills, no war crimes, no future, no orders, no repercussions, no nightmares to fear in a next night he’ll never sleep through—Locus, who no longer has to fear consequence or morality—

 

—let’s go.

 

Washington gasps back to life. (Locus hadn’t gotten very far with this one.) Blood rushes to his face. Bruises will form on his neck. Locus gets off his chest and supports his torso, hands hovering around his ribcage as if worried the diaphragm inside might cease to function. Washington coughs and wheezes and tears form in his eyes, but he is alive.

 

Locus watches, with the unashamed and unself-conscious stare of the invisible dead, as Washington’s life settles back into his flesh. It’s beautiful. To no consequence, purpose, or judgment, Washington is beautiful just to be. He likes Washington alive just because he likes Washington alive.

 

Washington’s breath is hot against Locus’s face. His eyes are closed. He is breathing every breath with gratitude, and Locus feels it seep into his own lungs. If Locus is going to disappear, as all worn-up and abandoned machines do, into the abyss at this end of the world, then he doesn’t see why he can’t let this Washington live. Who’s going to reprimand him? What nightmares of his old past guilts will haunt him? What conflict will he suffer over those he’s already killed and those he's let live? Why not? Why not? He wants to.

 

Washington’s eyes are open. Dark and black, not a single crease along the open monolid. He is confused. He doesn’t understand.

 

That’s okay, Locus tells him. (He is trying to be reassuring.) It’s okay to not understand me. I won’t be here long, anyway. You were right. We were never alike, after all.

 

The monster in Washington’s beautiful skin says, “Yes, we are.”

 

And then Locus wakes up.

 

For real, that time.

 

He is looking into Felix’s eyes.

 

“Jesus!” Felix hisses. “Fuck’s sake—fuck! Get off—”

 

Locus snatches his hands off Felix’s throat as if burned. “Felix,” he says, too bewildered for irritation. “What…”

 

“You were having a sleep fit!” Felix snaps, bolting to his feet. “Fuck, I knew you were fucked up, but did you have to _attack_ me? It’s _me_ , asshole!”

 

“You should have known better,” Locus spits out. Felix should have. Felix is the one who’d mocked Locus for having lost control of his fight-or-flight reaction when asleep in the first place.

 

“Yeah, but Tartarus arrives in an hour,” Felix says. Locus stiffens. “Oh, what’s wrong with you _now_? Get your head on straight, knock it off—”

 

Felix glances down.

 

“—or jerk it off, I guess,” he says.

 

He sounds amused, now. Locus holds absolutely still. Felix, slowly, lowers himself to Locus’s eye level.

 

“I can’t believe,” he laughs, sotto voce, “that I’ve gone over a _decade_ hanging with you, only to find that the one thing in the whole world that gets Locs hot and bothered is the wet dream he gets from being told to _go to war_.”

 

Locus can’t breathe.

 

“Like—damn, I thought _I_ was fucked up, but you?” Felix’s teeth are gleaming. “A whole new level of wild, aren’t you?”

 

“Shut up,” Locus snaps. “Maybe that’s what gets you off, but _I_ follow orders. Nothing more.”

 

“So is this a gun needing maintenance?” Felix snickers. Felix’s eyes rake up and down, looking for blood. “Even a suit of armor has needs, in the end? _Coincidentally_ requires maintenance the day after we’re told to grind Chorus into the dirt?”

 

Locus says nothing. He doesn’t bother arguing with Felix anymore. Felix always wins. Felix is always right, one way or another. Even now, Felix is becoming righter and righter as he talks himself into it. He moves to push Felix away.

 

“Is this about Washington?” Felix asks.

 

“None of your business,” Locus snaps quickly. Too quickly.

 

Felix pushes Locus back down. “What did Washington say to you?”

 

“ _None_ ,” Locus says, “of your _business_.”

 

“It is if we’re doing this job,” Felix snaps right back. He leans forward. “But you know what? This—this is good.”

 

“This isn’t about Washington,” Locus says again, which he shouldn't have.

 

“Of course it’s about Washington,” Felix hisses. “What else could it be? You’ve been fucking obsessed with that washed-out mongrel. Relax—I’m raring to kill that piece of shit Tucker. I know how it is. You’re raring to finish the job with Washington.”

 

Felix is becoming righter and righter the more he speaks. That’s the rule with Felix. Felix makes himself right by virtue of talking aloud. Locus can't even open his mouth, and Felix's grin spreads wide.

 

“I fucking knew it,” Felix hisses. “I _knew_ it.”

 

Felix’s face is a breath away. His left hand is around Locus’s neck. His right is on Locus’s navel, right above his erection.

 

“Nowhere else for crazies like us,” he hisses, grinning wide and vindictive. “We need each other.”

 

The kiss is full of Felix’s teeth. Locus kisses back anyway, desperate for the soft feeling of skin. There’s only bone.

 

“I knew it, I knew it,” Felix sighs, like triumph, or maybe relief. “Washington’s a dead man. You’ve got his fucking corpse laid out in your wet dreams, you bloodthirsty motherfucker.”

 

Locus shuts him up with another kiss. His skin is crawling, like it's trying to get away from Felix even as Locus pushes himself closer. Felix’s hands feel like the press of a gun, which Locus is fine with, because Locus is trained to never fall apart under fire. He wants what Felix says to be true—that he woke up with a boner at the thought of killing a man, like his skin and his armor have merged into one monstrous experiment. He wants to _make_ it true. He thinks that he could make it true if Felix could force it into him. Locus presses Felix’s mouth to his own harder, more insistently—

 

And Locus’s head thinks, with the clarity of two years of hindsight and the conviction of a sleeping dreamer: _No_.

 

“Fuck yes,” Felix whispers. His hands wind into Locus’s hair. Around his neck. Across his waist.

 

Locus thinks: _I don’t want this_.

 

Head spinning, skin itching, Locus drags Felix into his lap, as if Felix’s nonexistent weight could pin him down. Felix grinds down hard—not hard enough—why isn't it enough?

 

Locus thinks: _I didn’t want this, and I do not want this._

 

It’s not working, Locus thinks wildly. Why isn’t it working? _I knew it_ , Felix had said. Isn’t Felix right, one way or another? Why isn’t it—?

 

Felix is peeling apart Locus’s undersuit. There’s skin underneath. Locus’s skin. His _human_ skin—the skin he was born with—

 

“Hold still, you fucking baby,” Felix snaps. Locus can’t breathe. He can't even speak. He tries to hold still. Panic is in his human flesh. “Stop _squirming_.”

 

Locus thinks: _I don’t want this_.

 

Felix’s hands go lower.

 

_No, I don’t want this—_

 

“I knew it,” Felix says.

 

 _No, I don’t, I don’t_ —

 

"I said _hold_ _still_." Fingers around his erection.

 

_I DON’T, I DON’T, I DON’T—_

 

“Knew it,” Felix hums, and licks a stripe up Locus’s c

 

 

 

 

 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
 

 

 

 

Locus tears off his helmet. Throws it as far away from him as he can. Gasping for air. Pulling unfiltered poison into his lungs.

 

He has memory all over his skin, crawling in his body, boiling from the inside out with traces of _fucking Felix’s fingers_ he rips the seal off the back of his neck and peels it down, unlatching metal plates, he has to get out he has to get out of himself leave Felix behind leave it gone _leave leave_

 

he can’t do it he can’t do it he’s made a mistake he only _wishes_ he could be locked in a cell where he can’t do anything and can’t think anything and can’t be anything where he can go from being a suit of armor to an inmate number he is lost he is suffocating he is smothering in himself and

 

* * *

 

 

Breathe in.

 

Breathe out.

 

Hold.

 

* * *

 

 

Samuel Ortez, alive, is gasping poison into his lungs in the middle of a dead colony. He is remembering the best moment of his life in the hopes that it will return him to sanity.

 

It goes something like:

 

“ _Fuck the mission!_ ” Felix snarls. Venom in every word, poison rolling out of his skin like smog. “ _Jesus Christ! For once in your life, would you forget about following goddamn orders! I’m not doing this for Hargrove._ ” Felix turns away, looking to his next prey—he’d never been looking at Locus, because Felix has no eyes for anyone but himself, because Felix is blind, contained, self-circular, ceaselessly himself. “ _I’m doing this for me,_ ” Felix says.

 

Sam holds that moment, listening to Felix make the biggest mistake of both their lives, close to his chest. It is like a flower, or a flame, in the constant state of blooming, over and over and over again, the diamond crystal of of ten years of Felix before then; all of Sam's gratitude for the freedom to despise himself, to consider himself a living creature worthy of hate; every moment of Felix's long fall off a Temple tower existing all at once. The shriek he'd made. The sound of Felix pleading, on his knees, for Locus's help. The weight of his sword in Locus's hand. 

 

The moment doesn’t think. The moment doesn’t know. The moment doesn’t feel or doubt itself. It just _is_ , because it can never  _not_ be, not so long as Felix is dead. Irrevocably true, as murder always is, in every past, present, and future.

 

He cradles the moment in his hands, for the days when he doesn’t know and doesn’t know and doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. He holds the moment for when he’s thrown his armor across the moon surface and is breathing in poisoned air and shaking in the white powdered dirt. The moment is warm. It has to be. It’s all he has. Some days, all he is.

 

This moment is his mission—his monumental, vast, impossible, _singular_ mission—this moment is his marching orders: to himself, from himself, for himself. He will not turn back on that moment, because he can’t.

 

Felix had died for it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The colony is beautiful.

 

The soil is a glittering white on this moon, like dry snow, and soundless under his feet. The air is still hazy in his eyes, even without his helmet. The atmosphere is even colder across his skin. He can taste the bitter metals in the polluted, poisoned air on his own tongue. Nothing moving, nothing living, hundreds of dead refugees waiting for Locus.

 

The solar panels click off. The ship is ready to fly.

 

It's time to enact the plan: fly off into the sunset, forget this colony, forget these people. Clean his hands of matters he can't solve. There is no justice or happy ending to be wrought here by his hands, no calculable right thing to be done...

 

He stands up.

 

He doesn't pick up the helmet. He doesn't pick up his armor plates.

 

He walks, again, towards the colony, until he stands at the doors to the colony for the last time. The two corpses are still sitting in the entry-way, watching him trespass where the living do not belong. No wind. No sound. No consequences, no second-guessing, no explanations, no reason. Just Locus. He's been here so many times before. For once, he's going to do it right. _His_ right. 

 

At the broken door to the colony the Blues and Reds left for dead, Locus, alone, still does not know what he should do. But he knows what he _will_ do.

 

He will invite himself inside, again. When he's copied seventy-two collective hours of security footage of the Blues and Reds's movements at Arum-Lil, he will invite himself out, too, without account or apology. And when he packs his ship and leaves the moon altogether, he will forget his old armor plates and helmet lying in the white dirt, growing rot in the cold sun without him. He will locate the Blues and Reds. He will evaluate them for what they're worth. He will forge official criminal records for them, if need be. He will take them to whatever authorities will suit them best. He will not stop to think about what or who or why; he will decide, alone, and without apology. Become causeless, meaningless, nonsense, endless; shed armor for steel that grows out of his bones. He is turning over a flashdrive full of dead faces and a noiseless massacre. He is turning over a new leaf. Looking it in the eyes. It looks, unsurprisingly, so much like Felix.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Soon, Grif will ask: “Do you, though?”

 

“Do I what,” Locus will say.

 

“Ever miss Felix?”

 

Locus will say, “No.”

 

He will snap the battery into the hot plate. The light will flick on. Slowly, broth will begin to simmer, pushing steam like warm breath in the air.

 

Locus will be telling the truth.

**Author's Note:**

> “...Lindemann was interested in understanding the symptomatology of grief.  Through his research he established some common symptoms of grief which included 1) somatic distress 2) preoccupation with images of the deceased 3) guilt 4) hostile reactions and 5) loss of pattern of conduct. He also noted a sixth, less common reaction, in which traits of the deceased person would appear in the bereaved person...” 
> 
> -Grief Work: the grief theory of Erich Lindemann


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